Highlights of the trip (since it's late, we're leaving tomorrow, my computer has limited battery life left and I'm too lazy to get up and plug it in:
- Extremely potent margaritas and hand made tortillas at dinner the first night we were here. I was having trouble walking in a straight line after, I am not kidding, approximately one third of a margarita. Hooray!
- Ancient grandma commenting obsessively on how 'large' (by which I think she means Caucasian-looking) baby's eyes are. But I think we're in - on the third visit (this afternoon) she gave me a big chunky ring set with an enormous faux pearl and (according the box) Genuine Crystals as a keepsake, as well as a fluffy blue knit scarf. Baby luckily cooperated quite well being passed around like a parcel and beamed gummily at ancient grandma. Toothlessness apparently runs in the family.
- Butternut squash ravioli with crumbled amaretto cookies and sage butter for supper last night at Il Sogno (San Antonio foodie hot spot) (the cookie business sounds a little peculiar, but molto bene. Due thumbs up from me.)
- The temperature. A weird thing to include on a best-of list, but really, the temperature has been unbelievably pleasant. Neither too hot nor too cold but exactly perfect, such that you walk around in short sleeves saying, ah, gosh, the air feels so nice on my skin! I went for a run this morning and it was perfect running weather. (Although architecture/landscape not so inspiring: we are in a neighbourhood full of monochromatic grey/beige 1950's ranch style bungalows with dead grey lawns, no inhabitants in evidence, and the landscape is so flat that the elevation gain between Basin Street (where I started out) and Mountaintop Boulevard (highest point) was all of about six feet.
I don't know that I can quite include it as a highlight, but it's certainly worth mentioning - we went to the Smokehouse this afternoon, for authentic Texan pit barbecue - $32 at a glorified roadside shack will buy you a pound of sausages, a pound of short ribs, a pound of brisket, a pound of pork, a big bucket of potato salad, a big bucket of beans, and a pint of barbecue sauce. I am beginning to understand why so many people here clock in over three hundred pounds. You could get seriously fat here in not very much time at all.
We also went to the Alamo, aka the shrine to extremely selective Texas history. We (or at least I) did not purchase any shot glasses, coffee mugs, T-shirts, or key-rings in the gift shop, although I was tempted by a little plaster model of the front of the Alamo, mostly because they came in two sizes, labelled for convenience as "Small Frontalamo" and "Large Frontalamo" and I thought the German conciseness and precision of the noun "Frontalamo" was worth a keepsake. However, a lemon sorbet at the icecream shop across the street was calling to me more loudly, so I went and blew some of my hard earned cash on that.
ok, eyes are starting to close involuntarily...
